Of this a prophet must avail himself who announces to the world the important intelligence of a heavenly revelation. The great purpose of his sacred mission implies the widest possible proclamation of his doctrine in a language generally intelligible, which a forged language never can be. If, as was surmised,[39] the Desátir be set up as a rival to the Koran, it must have been written in a national language for a nation; the Persians owned as theirs the _Mahabadian_ religion, the identical one which history, although not under the same name, attributes to them in remote ages, as will result from an examination of the doctrine itself. Considering the knowledge required, and the difficulties to be overcome in forging a language in such a manner as to impose, even for a time, upon the credulity of others, we shall conclude that nothing less than direct proof is requisite for establishing such a forgery as a real fact. Now, what arguments have been set forth for declaring the language of the Desátir to be nothing else than “an artificial idiom invented to support an imposture?” Silvestre de Sacy says:[40] “It is difficult indeed, not to perceive that the multiplied relations which exist between the _Asmáni_, ‘heavenly,’ and Persian languages are the result of a systematic operation, and not _the effect of hazard_, nor _that of time, which proceeds with less regularity in the alterations to which language is subjected_.” I must apologise for here interrupting this celebrated author, for the purpose of referring to what nobody better than himself has established as a peremptory condition of existence for any language, and what he certainly never meant to deny, but may perhaps here be supposed to forget――namely, that a language is not “the effect of hazard,” and although “not the result of systematic combination,” yet, as an instinctive creation, shows surprising regularity, and that an evident rule predominates in the alterations which time produces in languages. Silvestre de Sacy proceeds: “The grammar of the Mahabadian language is evidently, for the whole etymological part, and even (which is singularly striking) in what concerns the anomalous verbs, traced from (_calquée sur_) the Persian grammar, and as to the radical words, if there be many of them the origin of which is unknown, there is also a great number of them in which the Persian root, more or less altered, may be recognised without any effort.” Erskine examined, without the least communication with the French critic, the Mahabadian language, and says:[41] “In its grammar it approaches very nearly to the modern Persian, as well in the inflection of the nouns and verbs, as in its syntax.” Norris[42] takes the very same view of it.